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update - march 30, 2000 rhc website still in preparation
update on radio havana cuba |
Update: News Distribution from RHC
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
15 January, 2000
RADIO HAVANA CUBA - TECHNICAL PROBLEMS WITH WEBSITE & E-MAIL
Subscribers to Radio Havana Cuba's mailing lists and visitors to their website at www.radiohc.org have written to us or to the station asking why the site has not been updated since January 5th. The daily newsfeed was turned off January 6 and 7, but we received word from RHC that they would resume normal news delivery on Monday, January 10th. However, we have not received any updated news, and we are having problems communicating with Radio Havana.
In December, updates of a few science and technology programs did not arrive on schedule, but some of these broadcasts were probably pre-empted for New Year specials and coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case.
E-mail to RHC is being delivered normally to their mail host in Havana, but their mail to us has not been reliable since early January. In the past, such e-mail trouble was due to problems with Windows mailers on RHC's workstations. We do not know what the problem is now, but we have determined that our internet link with Cuba is functioning.
Occasional technical difficulties are inevitable; RHC has always overcome them in the past, and we are sure they will again. We are working to discover what the problem is and to do what we can to help.
RHC's successful internet presence is all the more remarkable because it is maintained essentially by "remote control." RHC does not have direct international access to the internet.
Online access has steadily improved in Cuba since the early 1990s especially since 1996 when CENIAI, Cuba's first internet provider, began offering full internet services. But the medium is very new in Cuba, and requires a large investment in equipment and training.
The US embargo has exacerbated telecommunications difficulties; international access is still enormously expensive and the bandwidth available cannot yet meet the growing demand. Access from abroad to the island's internet sites is unreliable and unacceptably slow, so many Cuban institutions maintain mirror sites on foreign servers around the world, allowing the island to build its own domestic intranet to serve the Cuban population.
Since 1997, NY Transfer has been hosting Radio Havana Cuba's website and radiohc.org e-mail addresses on our servers at Blythe Systems in New York City. Our staff and volunteers maintain the website and RHC's mailing lists for news distribution in 4 languages.
Our collaboration has been a great success - for the first time, RHC's news has been available online daily, reliably and professionally, with only minor interruptions since our mutual effort began in 1997.
Traffic to the site has increased phenomenally; RHC receives thousands of e-mail messages every week from web visitors and shortwave listeners around the world. All this traffic is transmitted automatically from RHC's mailboxes in New York to their office in Havana, where the station also receives a large volume of e-mail directly to its Cuban e-mail accounts.
Over the years, we've added custom programming, a search engine and other features to the site. One of our favorites is the Dxers Unlimited section, produced by RHC's Science and Technology Editor, Arnie Coro. Here you'll find a wealth of information on shortwave and ham radio, as well as "Breakthrough," a weekly report on Science and Technology in Cuba.
Last year, RHC added Real Audio feeds to their webdsite, which have also been extremely popular. In October, staff shortages at NY Transfer required a two-week delay in posting these files. We asked RHC to recuit a volunteer to take on the job, but they were not able to. Since then, the station has not resumed the feeds; we do not know the reason, but perhaps the daily schedule was overly ambitious. Considerable labor is required to produce audio files for the internet.
NY Transfer donates its resources, services and training to a number of Cuban institutions so they can maintain editorial control of their content while receiving needed technical assistance. As we have with other progressive groups since 1985, our goal in working with RHC and other Cuban organizations is to empower them to run their own internet services independently when their resources permit. You can see some of the other groups we currently work with at NY Transfer's non-profit homepage, www.blythe.org.
This year, Radio Havana plans to launch another website inside Cuba, which they can access directly and maintain themselves. NY Transfer's system will remain available to bridge the bandwidth gap, enabling RHC to maintain any services their domestic resources cannot yet handle. We hope to begin working with our Cuban counterparts soon to help them create what will become RHC's primary site in Cuba, and to begin mirroring their content on their site in New York.
On the internet, Radio Havana Cuba has been able to reach an entirely new audience -- people who don't listen to shortwave radio, but who have internet accounts or WebTV. Through the World Wide Web, Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists, RHC has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to Cuba, its culture and its revolution, and Cuba has made countless new friends as a result.
All this progress requires a tremendous amount of equipment, financial assistance, and training in new skills for RHC's staff, who struggle daily with the shortages and service interruptions that remain a fact of life in Cuba, despite impressive economic improvement in recent years.
Simply to communicate with the world, Cuba must overcome constant harrassment and interference from the US Government and other enemies of the revolution.
This is also a time of increased tension with the United States, and the Cuban people are focusing much of their time and energy on the effort to obtain freedom for 6-year-old Elian Gonzales so that he may return home to his family in Cuba.
Some of you have written several times to ask about resumption of the RHC news and have not received a reply. We understand the lack of news from RHC is frustrating, but more e-mail traffic only makes communications problems worse, so please be patient while RHC sorts out its problems, which we are confident they will.
In the meantime, NY Transfer News will continue to carry Cuban news as part of our Caribbean alternative newsfeed. We will do our best to get more information on the situation in Havana, and we'll post updates about RHC there as well.
To hear Radio Havana Cuba on shortwave, check the news sections in your language of the RHC website, where you will find RHC's Winter 2000 Program Guides, listing hours and broadcast frequencies in english, spanish, french and portuguese.
Another good news source from Cuba is Granma Internacional Digital, which is published on the web in 6 languages, and is now updated daily. This is an excellent, highly professional news site that last year was recognized by the prestigious Editor & Publisher Magazine as one of the Top 100 Sites in the World. Check it out!
Thank you again for your patience.
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